Action or POV cameras have been around a long time now, but the segment is still evolving and new capabilities are emerging constantly. 360-degrees cameras are part of the latest craze, and they are getting smaller and smaller which makes them more relevant for capturing mountain biking shenanigans– and anything else in your life you feel like recording and sharing. Insta360 has been making inroads into what was once the exclusive domain of GoPro, and with their new X4 Air now tipping the scales at the regular POV cam weight, we thought it would be a relevant piece of tech to review for the MTB crowd. Here we go!
Insta360 X4 Air Highlights
- Lightweight & portable (165g)
- 8k30fps 360 video
- Dual 1/1.8" sensors
- Shoot first, frame later - hit record and pick the best angles after filming with ai-powered reframing tools in the Insta360 app
- Invisible selfie stick effect
- User-replaceable lenses
- Flowstate stabilization & 360º horizon lock
- 8k30fps active HDR - captures all the details, boosts colors in the highlights and shadows, and delivers superb stabilization even in action-packed moments
- Built-in wind guard
- Numerous accessories available
- Pricing: from $399.99 USD
Initial Impressions
360-degree cameras are easily recognizable, thanks to their dual lenses used to capture the entirety of the world around them – hence the name, of course. The first models were pretty bulky, but sizes have come down over the past couple of years to the point that there is almost no form-factor penalty to running a 360 cam vs. a traditional single-lens action cam. The Insta360 X4 Air is among the smallest and lighter options currently available, weighing in at a scant 165 grams and about the size of a small remote control.
Reading through the spec sheet can be a bit overwhelming, so here’s the crux of it: the X4 shoots up to 8K video at 30 frames per second, in dual-lens 360-degree mode. That’s not the same as pushing 8K out of a high-end video camera, because the 360-degree footage you capture will need to be reframed and exported in a lower resolution format before you can use it on your YouTube or IG channel. When reframing, you basically cut out a part of the 360-degree canvas and render that part as a regular, flat video. This process takes place in the Insta360 app on the mobile or in the desktop studio software (both are free to use). You can’t export the reframed scenes in 8K, as that would mean upscaling the footage and basically creating pixels that weren’t there in the first place, if that makes sense. You can however export in 4K (although note that if you reframe with a very narrow field of view, you may end up artificially upscaling the footage as you will have “zoomed in deeper than the existing pixels” in that case).
One of the fun things about 360 cameras is the invisible selfie stick effect. Because each lens captures a bit more than 180 degrees of footage, the two halves overlap each other when the camera stitches them together to create the full 360-degree view, and that overlap is used to hide the stick. That means you can mount the camera on a stick (up to 3 meters or 10 feet long), and capture footage that looks like it was shot on a drone or by a third person camera operator. Definitely get at least one of these with your cam (pick one of the bundles that includes a stick for good value).
Hardware-wise, the X4 is a rugged piece of kit. The camera feels solid in the hand, with no sharp edges anywhere – the materials have a premium feel to them. The battery is easily swappable for extra recording time if you have a second one, and there’s a USB-C port hidden under a small latch that allows you to download footage and charge the camera directly with a USB-C cable (we also got a dual-battery fast charging case with ours). Despite the presence of two latches, the X4 is rated down to 15 meters of depth in water. The lenses are fully user-replaceable, with a simple tool that lets you just twist the old lens out and twist the new one in, should you damage one. Since these fisheye-type lenses can’t be hidden behind a scratch cover like on a classic action cam, this feature is important when it comes to safeguarding your investment and ensuring a long life for your camera.
We won’t bore you to death by diving deep into all the specs, features, and functions of the X4, but a few words on accessories are warranted. As previously mentioned, the selfie stick should be on the must-have list, and then there is a plethora of accessories to choose from depending on what you want to shoot with your camera. We got a road-rage-inducing “gap cam” mount for the car, a chesty for the MTB, a dive case, and an assortment of stick-on helmet mounts and such. The camera itself takes a ¼-inch bolt mount or a specific magnetic quick-release mount, and many of the mounts are compatible with the classic pronged mount made popular by GoPro, so there’s an adapter for that as well. One important accessory is an extra wind-shield for the mics, that one proved crucial to getting decent audio at speed (the X4 features built-in wind guards and “improved audio processing” to help reduce wind noise, but in our experience it was way better after adding the external wind guard as well). All told, we’ve been pretty pleased with the quality of the various accessories we got with our camera.
On The Trail/In The Water/On The Road
A 360-degree camera is pretty easy to use, at least as far as the capture goes. Since you don’t really have to aim the camera at anything, you just mount it where you need it, and hit record. The LCD screen is crisp and bright, and the menu system is quite good for the amount of real estate at hand. We shot everything at the highest resolution setting (8K/30 fps), which leaves the most flexibility for reframing in the editing later (while chewing up storage space at an alarming rate). Note that the X4 doesn’t have slomo capabilities in the full 8K mode, so you’ll have to drop the resolution if you want to slow things down (also, it is limited to 60fps even then, so it won’t slow down your footage as much as the 120fps of the flagship X5 for example). Battery life is pretty good, but the extra battery will probably come in handy if you’re filming every run of the day in the bike park. To show you what the footage looks like “out of the box”, here’s a demo reel we put together – image stabilization turned on, Dive Case mode for the underwater shots, no HDR used, no color grading beyond how the editing suite renders its footage with the base settings, reframed with Insta360 Studio, final edit in PowerDirector, final export at 1920/1080, 24 fps, 15Mbit/s (and then uploaded to YouTube, of course):
We’ve been well impressed with the usability of the X4, and the image quality is quite good, as long as you stay reasonable when reframing your shots. By that we mean, you can’t expect to zoom in too deep and still get super crisp detail – the resolution just isn’t there to support that. Wide and ultra-wide shots look great though, with good image stabilization and horizon lock keeping things level. We think the wider angles add some excitement to the footage anyway, providing a more immersive experience for the viewer. We also really like the creative angles that open up with the 360-degree field of view available to compose from after the shot, definitely a very useful feature for us when editing footage for product reviews, for example. The X4 manages low-light situations fairly well, although we noted some extra shakiness in chest mounted footage when shooting in shady woods at the end of the day. Not something we hold against this camera in particular, it’s asking quite a lot to produce super-crisp low-light footage with such a small (and relatively modestly priced) device. As for underwater shots, we were extra pleased with the results when using a dedicated dive case, along with the in-camera color correction it produced really usable shots straight out of the box.
On the topic of the editor, Insta360 has done a good job with their Studio software (free to use with their cameras). It’s not a full-fledged video editing suite, and it has some annoying quirks here and there in terms of workflow, but it does offer up some fun transitions out of the box that will easily support a basic workflow where you do the whole edit in-suite. The real strong point of Studio is how it manages reframing via keyframes. Basically, it allows you to change the view angle (pan, zoom, orientation) at any point in a clip by adding a keyframe there and just dragging the image around on the screen, after which the editor seamlessly creates smooth camera “moves” between the keyframes in the final render. It’s easy and fun, and opens up some really cool creative avenues to explore. The software also knows how to track a specific subject within a clip, which is very useful whether you’re trying to keep yourself in a selfie shot, or frame somebody else who’s in on the action too.
There’s a user-friendly mobile app as well (also free to use with the Insta360 cameras), it features a full editing suite as well as a bunch of different templates and presets that make it pretty easy to whip up a little fresh content for your feeds and followers on the go. It’s always a bit finicky to edit on a mobile, but Insta360 has done a good job with their solution. Use AI-powered quick cut features to generate something automatically, or dig deep into manual editing with keyframes, transitions, and effects. Some of them are a bit on the cheesy side, but there’s plenty of polished and pro-looking options as well.
Things That Could Be Improved
The X4 has been mostly reliable in action. It has sometimes struggled with instant-on recording, throwing random SD-card errors just after we’d hit record, so it pays to make sure it’s actually recording before risking it all for the clip – “hey, is this thing on?” Sometimes we’d have to take the card out and put it back in again to get it going (and this with a brand-new quality card of the correct spec, no Temu cards here). We’ve never lost a clip or had the camera stop recording in the middle of the action though, so this issue seems related to reading the card at start-up.
As previously mentioned, you can push the image stabilization too far in low-light situations, which results in a bit of shake/blur if you crop into the footage too much in the edit, and you can sometimes notice a little distortion in the area where the footage from the two lenses is stitched together (more visible in underwater shots than anywhere else). Once you know about that, it’s pretty easy to work around, and we still think the footage looks really good for the most part. As a general rule of thumb we’d say keep the view angle pretty wide, and your shots will look crisp (which is sort of the point of this kind of camera anyway, it’s not exactly built for telephoto zooming…).
The chest mount supplied by Insta360 is fully functional, but the elastic straps that sit over the shoulders are a little bit weak, which translates to some unwanted camera movement – further exacerbated by the longer form-factor of the camera itself. It’s still our preferred mount for shooting first-person MTB action, but something to keep in mind (there might be some third-party alternatives out there that are sturdier).
What’s The Bottom Line?
There are crazy good options for all the “content creators” out there these days, and in our little two-wheeled niche of the world, action cams are still a go-to for those looking to bang out something fresh without a production crew or even a friend to point a camera at them. The Insta360 X4 Air provides an instant upgrade of the self-filmed POV concept for those who are new to 360-degree cameras, and it does so without much of a form-factor or weight penalty. It also opens up new angles thanks to the “disappearing selfie stick”, which makes it even more versatile for capturing all those slices of life you feel like sharing. We can’t guarantee that more people will actually want to WATCH your X4 content (unless you’re Mark Matthews), but those who do will at the very least be treated to high-quality footage and fun points of view.
For more information head on over to insta360.com.
About The Reviewer
Johan Hjord - Age: 53 // Years Riding MTB: 21 // Weight: 190-pounds (87 kg) // Height: 6'0" (1.84m)
Johan loves bikes, which strangely doesn’t make him any better at riding them. After many years spent practicing falling off cliffs with his snowboard, he took up mountain biking in 2005. Ever since, he’s mostly been riding bikes with too much suspension travel to cover up his many flaws as a rider. His 200-pound body weight coupled with unique skill for poor line choice and clumsy landings make him an expert on durability - if parts survive Johan, they’re pretty much okay for anybody. Johan rides flat pedals with a riding style that he describes as "none" (when in actuality he rips!). Having found most trail features to be not to his liking, Johan uses much of his spare time building his own. Johan’s other accomplishments include surviving this far and helping keep the Vital Media Machine’s stoke dial firmly on 11.
Photos and video by Johan Hjord
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6/10/2026 9:47am
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